Geraldo Rivera, a former close friend of Donald Trump, issued a stark warning to Latino men who might be thinking of voting for the Republican candidate in the upcoming presidential election.
“F--k these racists,” the former Fox News host posted to X late Sunday. “Latino men of good will, have pride in yourselves and your ancestors. A vote for Trump is a vote against self-respect.” Along with a number of fascistic Trump comments from recent weeks, Rivera’s post specifically referenced remarks from podcaster Tony Hinchliffe who described Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” at a Trump rally in New York City on Sunday.
Rivera’s own father was a Puerto Rican immigrant to the United States, and he spent time living with his grandparents in Puerto Rico as a teenager. In 2008, he published a book which drew on his father’s story titled His Panic: Why Americans Fear Hispanics in the U.S.
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“It’s a story that’s like so many tens of millions before and after us,” Rivera said the year after its publication. “All my Dad ever wanted was for us to grow up and be assimilated, to be Americans, real Americans.”
His scathing post warning Latino voters away from the former president comes after Rivera—a long-time Republican who has otherwise stood by Trump’s side through a litany of controversies over the years—recently publicly endorsed Kamala Harris, describing Trump as a “sore loser who cannot be trusted to honor the Constitution.”
Hinchcliffe’s jokes also referenced an offensive stereotype about Black people and further slandered Latinos, in crude terms, as people who “love making babies.”
Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican musical superstar, shared a video from Harris’ Instagram account on his own story moments after Hinchcliffe delivered his remarks. The clip, in which Harris attacks Trump’s handling of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017, amounted to an announcement that Bad Bunny is supporting Harris, a source close to the musician told The Washington Post.
“I will never forget what Donald Trump did and what he did not do when Puerto Rico needed a caring and a competent leader,” Harris says in the footage. “He abandoned the island, tried to block aid after back-to-back devastating hurricanes and offered nothing more than paper towels and insults.”
Fellow Puerto Rican artists Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez also shared the footage of Harris with their followers. Martin separately shared a clip of Hinchcliffe’s offensive comments, adding a caption in Spanish saying: “This is what they think of us.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is also of Puerto Rican descent, also condemned the remarks on a Twitch stream alongside Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. “When you have some a-hole calling Puerto Rico ‘floating garbage,’ know that that’s what they think about you,” the congresswoman said on the stream.
Hinchcliffe replied to Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks to claim she has “no sense of humor” and claimed it was wild of Walz to “take time out of his ‘busy schedule’ to analyze a joke taken out of context to make it seem racist.”
“I love Puerto Rico and vacation there,” Hinchcliffe added. “I made fun of everyone…watch the whole set. I’m a comedian Tim…might be time to change your tampon.”
“You don’t ‘love Puerto Rico,’” Ocasio-Cortez hit back. “You like drinking piña coladas. There’s a difference.”
Danielle Alvarez, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, said in a statement to the Post: “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign.”
